Millbank;

It was a quiet, old-fashioned farm-house, with gables and projections and large rooms and pleasant fireplaces and low ceilings and small windows, looking some of them toward the village, with its houses of white nestled among the trees, and some of them upon the hills, whose shadows enfolded the farm-house in an early twilight at night, and in the morning reflected back the warm sunshine which lay so brightly upon their wooded sides. There was a kitchen with a door to the north, and a door to the south, and a door to the east, leading out into the woodshed, and there were stairs leading to an upper room, and a fire-place “big enough to roast an ox,” Hester said, when, with her basket and bandbox and umbrella and camlet cloak and bird cage and kittens and Aleck, she was dropped at her new home and began to reconnoitre, deciding, first, that the late tenants of the place were “shiffless critters, or they would never have lived there so long with only a wooden latch and a wooden button on the outside door,” and second, that they were “dirty as the rot, or they would never have left them stains on the buttry shelf, that looked so much like cheese-mould.”

Hester was not altogether pleased with the house. It came a little hard to change from luxurious Millbank to this old brown farm-house, with its oaken floors and stone hearth and tiny panes of glass, and for a time the old lady was as homesick as she could be. But this only lasted until she got well to work in the cleaning process, which occupied her mind so wholly that she forgot herself, and only thought how to make the house a fitting place for her boy to come to after his travels West. Roger had given her money with which to furnish the house, and she had added more of her own, while Frank, when parting with her, had slipped into her hands one hundred dollars, saying to her, “Roger is too proud to take anything from me, and I want you to use this for the house.”

And so it was owing partly to Frank’s thoughtfulness and Hester’s generosity that the farm-house, when renovated with paper and paint, and furnished with the pretty, tasteful furniture which Hester bought, looked as well and inviting as it did. The most pains had been taken with Roger’s room, the one his mother occupied when a girl. Hester had ascertained which it was from an inhabitant of Schodick, who had been Jessie’s friend, and slept with her many a time in the room under the roof, which looked off upon the pond and up the side of the steep hills. The prettiest carpet was put down there, and curtains were hung before the windows, and the bed made up high and clean with ruffled sheets and pillow-cases, mementos of Millbank, and Jessie’s picture was hung on the wall, the blue eyes seeming to look sadly round upon a spot they had known in happier days than those when the portrait was taken. There were flowers, too, in great profusion,—not costly, hot-house flowers, like those which decked the rooms at Millbank, but sweet, home-flowers, like those which grow around the doors and in the gardens of so many happy New England homes,—the fragrant pink and old-fashioned rose and honeysuckle and heliotrope, with verbenas and the sweet mignonette.

And here Roger came one pleasant July afternoon, when a heavy thunder-storm had laid the dust, and cooled the air, and set every little bird to singing its blithest notes, and, alas! soured the rich, thick cream, which Hester had put away for the few luscious wild strawberries which, late as it was for them, Mattie had found in the meadow, by the fence, and picked for Mr. Roger. With the exception of this little drawback, Hester was perfectly happy, and her face was radiant when she met her boy at the door, and welcomed him to his new home, taking him first to his own room, because it looked the prettiest, and would give him the best impression.

Roger had been in Schodick once or twice when a boy, but everything now was new and strange, while, struggle as he might against it, the contrast between the old home and the new affected him painfully at first, and it was weeks before he could settle down quietly, and give his time and attention to the firm of which he at once became a member. For days and days he found his chief solace in wandering over the hills where his mother once had been, and exploring the shadowy woods, and hunting out the rock under the overhanging pine, where she had crept away from sight, and prayed that she might die, when the great sorrow was in her heart, just as it was now in his. He found the spot at last, just under the shadow of one great rock and on the ledge of another, where the ground was carpeted thickly with the red pine of last year’s growth, and the green, tasselated boughs above his head seemed to whisper softly, and try to comfort him.

Here poor Jessie had knelt, and felt that her heart was breaking. And here Roger sat, and felt that his heart was broken.

He had tried not to think much of Magdalen, and during the novelty and excitement of travelling he had not felt the bitter pain tugging at his heart as it was tugging now, causing him to cry out, in his anguish:

“Oh, Magda, my darling! how can I live without you?”

He had his father’s letter with him, and he read it again there in the dim light, and was struck, as he had never before been, with that clause which said:

“And if, in the course of your life, there is one thing more than another which you desire, I pray Heaven to grant it to you!”

He had read these lines many times, but they never impressed him so forcibly as now. It was his father’s last invocation to Heaven in his behalf. The one thing more than another which he desired was Magdalen, and why had God withheld her from him? Why had He not heard and answered the father’s prayer? Why had He dealt so harshly by the son, taking from him everything which had hitherto made life desirable?

These were hard questions for a creature to ask its Creator. And Roger felt hard and rebellious as he asked them, with his face among the cones and withered pines, and from the pitiless skies above him there came no answer back, for it is not thus that God will have His children question Him.

Roger could not be submissive then, and for hours he sat there alone, battling with his sorrow, and never trying to pray until at the very last, when with a cry such as a wayward child gives when the will is finally broken, he covered his face with his hands and prayed earnestly to be forgiven for all the wicked, rebellious feelings he had cherished, and for strength to bear whatever the future had in store for him. After that he never gave way again as he had done before, though he went often to that rock under the pine, and made it a kind of Bethel where, unseen by mortal eye, he could tell his troubles to God, and go away with the burden somewhat lightened.

They heard at the farm-house that Magdalen was improving slowly, and then there came a rumor in a roundabout way, that the day for the bridal was fixed, and that Mrs. Walter Scott was in New York selecting the bridal trousseau. Roger’s face was very white for a few days after that, and nothing had power to clear the shadow from his brow, until one morning there came a letter to Hester Floyd from Magdalen herself, with the delicate perfumery she always used lingering about it, and her pretty monogram upon the seal. How Roger pressed the inanimate thing in one hand and caressed it with the other, and how fast he carried it to Hester, who was in the midst of working over her morning’s churning, but who put the tray aside at once and washed her hands, and adjusted her spectacles, while Roger stood by inwardly chafing at the delay and longing to know what Magdalen had written. It was very short indeed, and formal and stiff, and did not sound at all like Magdalen. She was quite well now, and she wanted to thank Mrs. Floyd for all the care she had taken of her before leaving Millbank.

“Mrs. Irving tells me you were very kind to me,” she wrote, “and though I have no recollection that you or any one but Celine came near me, I am grateful all the same, and shall always remember your kindness to me both then and when I was a child, and such a care to you; I am deeply grateful to all who have done so much for me, and I wish them to know it, and remember me kindly as I do them. I am going away soon, and I want to take with me all I brought to Millbank. I have the locket, but the little dress I cannot find. Mrs. Irving thinks you took it in the chest. Did you, and if so, will you please send it to me at once by express, and oblige,

That was the letter. Not one word in it to Roger, except as the sentence beginning with “I am deeply grateful to all who have done so much for me,” was supposed to refer to him. She wished him to remember her kindly as she did him, and she was going away from Millbank, but where, or how, or with whom, Roger could not tell. Hester knew she was going to be married, though why “she should want to lug that dud of a slip round with her finery was more than she could divine,” she said, as she brought down the little spotted crimson dress, and wrapping it in thick brown paper gave it to Roger to direct.

“Maybe you’ll write her a line or two for me; my hand is too shaky and cramped,” she said to Roger, who shook his head and replied, “You must answer your own letters, Hester;” but he directed the little parcel to “Miss Magdalen Lennox, Belvidere,” and sent it on its way to Millbank.